Try to engage with your audience and respond when needed,
Put some effort into blogging.
Is it getting you somewhere?
Or do you fit the more common mold: unhappy, the results aren’t what you had hoped, and it’s A LOT of work to get all of this done. It should be easier than this, right? Shouldn’t the product, as amazing and worthwhile as it is, sell itself?
Unfortunately, this scenario happens a lot in content marketing.
We hate to break it to you, but it’s kind of like paying for McDonald’s and expecting Panera – or P.F. Chang’s.
Why Your Content Marketing is Failing: You’re Not Doing Anything Different
What is your favorite fast food joint?
Before you go touting your love of all things organic and kale-based (I’m a clean food freak, myself) – keep in mind that fast food restaurants in America serve millions of customers every day, even while we claim to understand the health benefits of all things green.
So why do those greasy, salty chains still do so well? Why are seven out of the top ten chains marked by fried food, calorie-laden sodas, and “unclean” food?
Because somewhere along the way, they set themselves apart and became different from the competition – and made a permanent impression upon their target audience’s mind.
When it comes to content marketing, you get what you put into it.
There’s a reason your content marketing efforts are producing Happy Meal-sized results when what you really want to serve is a delicious, home-cooked meal with a side of conversions and authentic engagement.
[clickToTweet tweet=”If you’re not doing anything different than the competition, you’re not going to stand out. @JuliaEMcCoy” quote=”If you’re not doing anything different than the competition, you’re not going to stand out. @JuliaEMcCoy”]
The good news?
You can change that, and we’re here to help you. Ready to chew on it?
Creating Compelling Content By Using the Right Approach
Joe Pulizzi reminds us at CMI that what we are creating must be valuable, useful, compelling, and different.
This means we have to step aside from the time we spend worrying about the process and approaches to content creation and move toward being more concerned with the actual content we create and the difference it makes for our audience.
Which means it actually has to make a difference.
Why post to social media? Why send out a newsletter? Why should your readers step away from their fried greasy plate over to your buffet of deliciousness and take a bite?
After all, there is a fast food joint on every corner.
There are 300 hundred hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute in addition to over 4 million Facebook “likes” and 347,222 Tweets.
3 Ways to Take Your Content Marketing from Greasy to Great
Our content marketing is failing not because we aren’t trying, but because we all look the same. There are some ways to change that and take your content from greasy, drive-thru fare to take-a-seat, dive in greatness of the finest of meals.
Are you ready to begin creating quality content with the maximum amount of engagement?
1. Be okay with changing course & diving deeper
No one likes to be in pain, but changing course and diving deeper usually means pain:
More investment/money
More time on your part
More hassle
But there is good news! This effort and time will give your content marketing so much more of a return on investment. Have you always done a blog post, social media post, and e-newsletter, right on time? Switch it up and do a podcast, experiment with Facebook Live, or move toward something more interactive.
It’s okay to pass up that burger place and keep driving for something more satisfying.
This is the number #1 trait that goaded me to work harder and achieve greater results since early 2016. Before that, I was a mediocre blogger. But today – I care.
Check out the case study I wrote last year on where we’re at: and for an example of a “more time/investment” post, check out the big spend infographic we did. Content like that isn’t cheap, but it’s worth it. Don’t do anything less.
2. Turn your focus back to your audience
Are you confident in the voice you are developing as an authority in your field? This requires effort on your part and takes some investment in understanding the readers and staying current on the content you are offering.
One way to turn the focus back on the audience – where it belongs – is to create a list of the biggest and best blogs in the niche you are in, and then analyzing the good, the bad, and the ugly.
No matter the subject matter, if it isn’t different, the audience won’t care. They will keep looking until they find the relevant and interesting solutions for their needs.
Remember that you aren’t writing to the whole world.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Find your niche, get to know it, and write/publish/create for the people in it. @JuliaEMcCoy” quote=”Find your niche, get to know it, and write/publish/create for the people in it. @JuliaEMcCoy”]
3. Use only the best tools
Let’s say you are looking to market your new business, which sells custom-made home décor. Besides the obvious competition from the big names, you have a host of smaller shops on sites like Etsy that will be selling similar products as your own.
How do you even begin to market to your audience and set your brand apart from the others? Here are a few tools we love.
Quora: This collaborative information-sharing and learning site connects the information needs of real humans (your target audience) with solutions provided by real people (you).
Answer the Public: This site finds and maps keyword suggestions and predictions that users see when they search on Google. Here, you can find out what questions your customers will have by way of a free report.
KW Finder: When you’re ready to research keywords and get the best bang for your buck, KW Finder gives you exact search volume data for your needs. The process is simplified and your results are a helpful way to find out which keywords to use based on the competition.
BuzzSumo: This powerful online tool lets any user find out what content is most popular by topic or by website. Quickly identify what content works well in a given industry and who the major influencers are. See a more extensive guide I wrote on BuzzSumo, here.
Boost Your Content Presence & Never Worry Why Your Content Marketing is Failing Again
The question now becomes, what are you going to do differently?
How can you change course, focus on the audience, and use effective tools for maximum impact?
You don’t have to be average, or settle for that – in any shape or form. There are so many ways to be different, so many ways to stand out and let your brand authenticity through.
Have you ever wondered how effective your emails are?
Do they leave an impression, or just end up in the trash folder?
It may be that you measure email success by the amount of people who open it and then click through. Which means that the email first has to be opened, then read, then clicked.
Not to mention it also has to be the appropriate length and interesting enough to engage readers and move them to action.
How much does email length matter? Can your tone shine through, and does anyone really read the subject line, anyway?
We’re here to break the answers to these questions down, and give you an updated guide (with a recent Boomerang exclusive!) all about email content marketing. Boost your email results when you put these into practice. Keep reading!
Email Marketing 101
Email is still critical to our content marketing efforts today.
Take a look at these email marketing stats for a better understanding of the impact email has in the industry:
Marketers have seen a 760% increase in revenue from segmented email campaigns.
Automated email messages average over 70% higher open rates and over 150% higher click-through rates than “business as usual” messages.
Email is 40x more effective at acquiring new customers than Twitter or Facebook.
Email is the connection between us and our prospects.
When content marketers invest their time and resources into powerful emails, the reach potential is limitless.
While technology has changed and social media has emerged over the past decade, email has stayed as a constant. Sure, we may not be using the same domain we did ten years ago, but the truth remains that when we need to send information, we email it.
When we want to be connected to our favorite brand, we join their email list.
Need a receipt for your store purchase, but don’t want a paper copy? Have it emailed.
For these reasons and more, content marketing efforts can be enhanced when we learn to take the best email marketing practices and use them effectively.
3 Best Email Content Marketing Practices
Back in the early 90’s, email hit the scene. Remember those AOL disks that were available through the mail and at the grocery store checkout stand?
And how we communicate has not been the same since. (Letters? What are those?)
Fast-forward to 2017, when 93% of marketers now say they use email for content distribution and consider it an important channel for their marketing success. And while it does remain an effective tool, it doesn’t mean we always use it in the best way.
Emails have a wide range of possibilities in reaching an audience, including:
Newsletters
Product updates
Transactional emails (after one has taken action on your website)
Deals and promotions
There are some qualities that make email an effective tool for your content marketing efforts. We have to learn the best way to increase the open rate, how to craft a subject line, how to create quality content, and how to choose the best time to write.
1. Learn How to Write a Great Email
You may be thinking, “Wait a minute. I’m a content writer. I know how to write.”
Isn’t it true that if we all knew how to write effective emails, there would be a higher response rate and we would be inundated with conversions?
So, yes, we can all use reminders from time to time about how to write effectively, and specifically, how to craft an email that engages the audience and encourages action.
A. Craft a compelling subject line
This seems like an obvious one, but if the subject isn’t engaging, few readers will want to click through to the actual content. Start by incorporating language that tells the reader what he or she can look forward to in the email.
Words like “take,” “don’t miss,” and “reserve” are goods one to start with.
B. Use personalization, if you can
Shaping email content to fit a reader’s needs by using customer segmentation has the potential to increase revenue.
In a study conducted by Direct Marketing Association, emails which were segmented and targeted generated 58 percent of the total revenue for marketers surveyed while 36 percent of revenue came from emails sent to specific target selections.
C. Create relevant and honest content
No one wants their time wasted, so coming up with a catchy email subject line that has nothing to do with the content inside is unfair and irresponsible. While you are crafting an engaging and personalized subject line, keep in mind that it should align with the content in the actual email. This not only keeps everything relevant, but sets you apart as an honest authority who isn’t out to trick anyone into clicking.
D. Continue to offer relevancy by expressing to the reader right away why you are writing
What is your connection? How are you providing a solution to the need? Our reach will go much farther when we highlight the benefits rather than the feature.
E. Get to the point
Practice writing concisely so the end result is powerful, tight sentences.
Too wordy, and you’ll lose your readers. Too short, and they could miss the point.
Content marketers must find a way to summarize a catch for the reader and encourage a click-through.
Everywhere we go, we see content – in just one minute, there are millions of Facebook and Instagram likes, hundreds of thousands of Tweets, and hours upon hours of YouTube videos uploaded.
We are consumed by content.
The last thing we need is more unusable information, interruptions, or sales pitches coming through our inbox. A long, drawn-out copy won’t cut it here; readers must be able to sift through quickly in order to make a decision about whether or not they’ll click through.
Try keeping emails between 50 and 125 words, which can increase the response rate for your efforts.
After we learn how to craft email content that engages the readers, it comes time to find the most effective closing methods.
Email closings matter. How we wrap up that fantastic content determines the response rate for our readers, and a few words can make the difference between clicking through and sending an email to the trash.
Boomerang conducted a study on more than 350,000 email threads and found that certain email closings were more effective at delivering higher response rates.
Those closings that included a variation of “thank you” saw a higher response rate than those that included words like “best” and “regards.”
Some of the most popular closings included a simple “thanks,” “cheers,” and “kind regards.”
Thanks in advance received the highest increase based on the average response rate.
In addition to the closing greeting, a CTA will tell your audience what to do. Simply adding a button that says “click here” may not be as effective as a call-to-action that clearly spells out what will happen when they click.
Here are some examples:
“Take the Survey”
“Learn the Secret”
“Get the Free Report”
Each email should be backed by something you want them to do, one central focus. The call-to-action always revolves around that one goal, even if there are multiple CTAs in one email.
When is the best time to send an email out? Is every day too often, and is once a month not often enough?
Opinions on the best day and time to send emails will vary across the industry, but there are some general guidelines we can follow that will contribute to maximum impact. In fact, analysts looked at billions of emails in order to gain insight into the best times to send emails, and the results are a bit different across the board.
Best days: Tuesday came in first place, according to data collected. In a close second was Thursday, followed by Wednesday.
As a side note, there were high click-through rates on Saturdays and Sundays, but since those are also the days when the fewest emails are sent, it kind of balanced out.
Best times: That same research had some interesting findings when it came to the best time to send email content. In first place was 10 a.m., followed by 8 p.m. – midnight, and then 2 p.m.
Some of these times might be surprising, but they also make sense; for example, many of us check our emails before bed, so the 8 p.m. timeframe fits that habit.
While this collection of data is not a one-size-fits-all for every brand, it is a good place to start.
Begin by sending out email content on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday at one of the times suggested. You may be surprised at what you find.
Grammar, Typos, & other Things We’ve Forgotten Since High School
Did you know Mondays are the worst days for email subject line errors?
And the more errors in an email’s subject line, the less likely it is to receive a response.
Grammar misuse and typos don’t scream “authority.” Instead, mistakes convey the message that the sender didn’t quite care enough to check and double-check the content.
It reduces our credibility as content marketers, interferes with the user experience, and pushes down the response we could get if only we had been more careful. If emails with an error have a response rate of only 29%, it’s worth our time and effort to read over everything carefully before hitting the “send” button.
If you need some help in this area, there are some effective tools you can use to boost your grammar and spelling.
After the Deadline: Paste in your content and get feedback that includes spelling errors as well as grammar and style suggestions.
Grammar Checker: This tool catches spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, and misuse of words.
StackEdit: Create professional-looking content and use the inbuilt spell checker to fix errors.
Write like a third grader: Emails written in this way saw a 36 percent life over those crafted at a college-reading level as well as a 17% higher response rate.
Read, then read again: Do a thorough read of your email content, take a short break, and then read it again. Check for sentence flow, clarity of thought, and grammar mistakes. Click any links you’ve included to make sure they work and go to the right place.
Send it to yourself: Remember writing speeches for high school and practicing them out loud? The same idea can be used here; send your email to yourself or one colleague to make sure all is good to go. This step can help to minimize typos and gives you or someone you know one more chance to proofread.
Get Awesome in Your Email Content
None of us want to spend time on emails that ultimately don’t get opened (boring headline) or get opened but lead to no action (boring content).
For truly awesome email content, your focus must be first on an engaging subject line, then on relevant and attention-grabbing content which is followed by an effective CTA. See more great email practices.
When we combine these practices with a focus on sending at the right time and on the best day, we can be on our way to crafting high-quality email content that everyone will want to share and be a part of.
This February, we’ve added some seriously powerful content services to our Content Shop repertoire.
All of our continual changes and updates are based on specific needs from our clients, and a strict adherence we personally have to always maintain the edge of the curve in our industry.
Here’s a shortlist / TL;DR of February’s new updates (scroll down to read about each):
Storytelling Images & Custom Blog Headers. Our design team has been creating these for our own brand with great results in more brand awareness and content traction, so we decided it was time to launch custom image solutions, including beautiful storytelling variations and custom blog images, for our clients!
Editing (Copy and Developmental). At both copy editing levels.
Professional Interviewing. In this service, based on one simple interview fee, we now have staff Project Managers who are experts at interviewing subjects and obtaining key information that leads to a wonderful interview.
Project Management. This new service takes care of a lot of “monkey work” that goes into organizing and maintaining content marketing.
Client 101s. These are completely free for our clients, and are being written and designed as we speak! The first one, a Process/Content Order Lifecycle 101, is live! We’re working on a Meet the Team 101 next, where we explain how everyone’s staff role fits into an order and how clients can contact each of us, a Writing Levels 101, and several others.
What’s New at Express Writers for February: Everything You Needed to Know on 5 New/Revamped Products & a New, Free Client Resource
1. New Custom Images: Storytelling Imagery, Blog Header Sets, & More
Ever thought to yourself…
“I wish I had a REALLY cool branded header for my blog and a variation to share on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook…”
“I wish I could visualize a step in my customer journey/buying process with a cool, engaging illustration…”
“It would be awesome to boost engagement with a cartoon strip for this industry controversial blog…”
We’ve got you covered on all of those visual needs in our re-launched Custom Imagery service, live in the Content Shop.
Clients can choose from a custom, beautiful, blog image set put together by our design team in Adobe InDesign, complete with a full-sized header and an inset to share on social media, or a storytelling graphic that would fit nicely in a process for your customers to visualize their journey/how it works page (example: our process).
Want to see how cool these get (read: how amazing our design team is)?
Here are a few:
Killer, right??
We’ve literally designed thousands of these images for our own brand by now – the samples above are a brief preview of what we can do – and we thought it was high time to allow clients to buy it as a product.
With custom imagery, we’ve seen massive results…
We a huge CTR boost with a cartoon strip on our SEO post – a 25% boost in actual reads.
Influencers picked up our content and shared it on Twitter WITH the image attached, boosting views to our content by another 25%.
Never leave your images last on your to-do list again.
Let us help you create better-than-average custom imagery to accompany your content!
2. Social Media Plans
During this month, we also did some heavy updates and restructuring, much-needed, to our social media plans.
I sat down and created new guidelines for our Social Media Experts, which condenses down to these three key, important changes:
We now create and post 3/images per week at the minimum level (3 IG posts) instead of 1. Images, and Instagram, are hot! You can’t miss out on either, so we’ve increasing the volume at all levels on all plans.
Our SMEs are now trained on how to use BuzzSumo to curateindustry influencer content, and position your brand as an authority by sharing content that your fans will love and identify with.
Choose whichever social media platform you’d like us to manage, now straight from the product itself!
Our Social Media Plans have also been renamedto Level 1, 2, and 3 instead of Basic/Guru/Enterprise.
3. Copy Editing
Our revamped Copy Editing service in the Content Shop now includes two levels to cover every need, developmental and copy editing services, starting at one hour (up to 3,000 words). We have senior, expert editors at both levels ready to take orders!
For one simple interview fee you can now have an incredible interview organized and done (check that off your list!) by our professional interviewing team. We now have staff Project Managers who have background expertise in interviewing and journalism, and have seen amazing results from the interviews done so far.
Just launched last week, our new project management service offers a wonderful solution for a lot of our marketer clients who are continually overwhelmed, swamped, and lost beneath the work they have to do on their content marketing get-done list.
Did you know that only 30% of marketers say their organizations are effective at content marketing? An actual decrease of 8% from the previous year.(source: Content Marketing Institute’s 2016 Benchmarks) Even less have a strong, documented content marketing strategy.
Yet budgets, goals, and creation itself in content marketing actually increased by a large percentage during the same year.
Our solution in offering project management is to help a real need we see that our clients have. Project management is a serious drain on them, yet a vastly crucial part of content marketing not to be overlooked.
Scenarios Where Project Management Fits In
Just a few of the problems our clients have given us that we can now solve with our project management service include:
“We’re thinking about hiring a part-time staff member to handle all of these content needs and work with you, but it may not be in the budget, or we don’t know if we have enough to give that person X hours per week.”
“I wear a lot of hats. I just don’t have time to manage all of the content, but if I had time, we’d hire you to produce a lot of things.”
“I’m completely disorganized and I really need help getting my ideas onto paper, and picking the right product.”
“I have people I want to have interviewed on our blog. Employees, industry names, that kind of thing. I just don’t have time to do it myself and it’s a long list.”
“I have lots of different personal and professional projects going on. I wish I could stay on task.”
“I have no idea about what I need but I do have an established business. I just want to pay a deposit/retainer and have you figure this out for me.”
“I need you to be in touch with my entire team on this project. Maybe you should even function as part of the team – as the managing editor.”
“I’m an agency and we want to basically up-sell your product to our clients. Each of our clients has a different need.”
What Project Management Includes
Our project management is designed into several categories:
A la carte hourly
Blocks where we manage 50 – 500 monthly projects in a spreadsheet every month.
Project management includes having us manage and create a spreadsheet, and maintain or organize a vast amount of ongoing content projects, starting at 50 and going to 500+ per month. We can enable a simple file uploader on your account, and will include weekly organization and phone support for you and your team by a dedicated project manager. You can also have a dedicated project editor in our new PM service.
6. New Resource (FREE): Client 101s
Last but not least, we’re writing and designing in-house several client 101s that will channel some of the biggest questions our clients have!
The first one, a Process/Content Order Lifecycle 101, is live, as a PDF and website page.
We’ll be doing more of these! Email our team: julia (a) expresswriters.com if you have any 101s you’d like to see.
Conclusion
At Express Writers, we strive hard to be at the forefront of trends, content marketing, and the best writing team out there.
(Just see our Values page if you aren’t sure about that promise.)
Hence comes this lineup of new products and resources at Express Writers, all in one month.
You can trust our commitment to stay ahead of the game when it comes to great content creation. It’s our passion!
It makes me dizzy when I read the one-star explanation: “May contain grammar, spelling, and wording issues. Will require editing. Not suitable for most clients.”
Why would you spend money on content you have to “fix” before you publish?
It’s like buying a pair of shoes with holes already in them. Plus, you’re wasting your valuable time when you have to fix, rewrite and edit, while saving a few dollars. It doesn’t add up.
We break the mold, because as a writing agency, we completely skip even offering the levels that many of our competitors start at. Keep reading to learn more about these levels, see real-time examples, and find out why I built my agency this way.
We Revolve Around Quality
When I created my writing agency back in 2011 (see our values), I had one key fundamental: discovering writers who had a real talent for writing. If they loved doing it, I always found a matching level of quality in their work. Then, my goal was to perfect my team and process, and train and mentor my team members in new SEO and content trends and tactics, so that I could grow my company into one that was writing and creating the best content on the web.
It has been hard as heck to keep that standard high.
The entrance tests I’ve written for our interviewees rule out all but 2% of our applicants, on average, today: and even after they pass my tests, there’s yet another test to see if they have reliability and ethics.
But if there’s anything I stay firm on, it’s these very standards. We don’t create crap content. We continuously take these standards seriously.
We Are the First Ones Adapting to Trends
As the company’s chief executive officer, I’m the first one sharpening my skills day-to-day. I’ve been named a top 50 content marketer, have written a bestseller on online writing, and maintain The Write Podcast as well as a Twitter chat.
We adapt to industry trends and grow at every stage. When Google launches an algorithm update, we learn about it as a team (we attend tech events), we blog about it, and we write in-depth studies on the SERP changes.
Internally, we add new experts as trends and content marketing evolves to match those needs, and we create inside mentoring just for our writers to read and grow. We take a look at new SEO and content marketing tools on the market when they come out, and integrate them into our content strategy where we can.
Today, we’re taking an inside look as to what sets our two writing levels apart, what level your business and web presence might benefit from investing in, and some case studies of how far expert writing can take you.
The Difference of our Levels: General vs. Expert vs. Authority
While all of our writers have significant experience in creating high quality, search engine optimized content, expert writers have expertise in a particular set of topics. Especially if you’re in an industry like software, medical, or law, you understand that there are significant, precise details involved. Expert writers understand those.
I sat down with Tara Clapper, our Content Development Specialist, to get her thoughts. She explains this in a really good light.
Tara:
I find it easiest to describe the difference between general and expert content to our clients by using my own experience as an example. I’ve been writing search engine optimized content since 2003. Like most writers, I have a few focused areas of expertise, including marketing.
When I write content about marketing, my background in the topic allows me to find and present a fresh angle in that field. I know exactly where to go to find reputable statistics and facts, too. I would qualify as an expert writer in marketing.
If I instead decided to write about database programming, I’d be lost. While I’m still an experienced writer, database programming is not my field of expertise, and it would show in the writing. When it comes to that subject, I’d be a general writer.
How We Select Writers at Every Level
All of our writers are personally selected by myself. Only 2% make it through the selection process, and once they’re in, we assess and track their interests and areas of expertise. Our editors continually evaluate and mentor the writers, continually helping them improve and refine their craft.
Through this process, we identify writers capable of creating expert content – and we match your content needs with those experts once you make an order.
Here’s another way to explain how different businesses have different needs:
Scenario 1: A restaurant owner has a website and needs copy for their web pages. Their food isn’t specialized. It’s good old American pub food, and the copy should appeal to hungry customers looking for some local grub. A general writer would be suitable for this topic.
Scenario 2: The owner of a company producing point of sale systems for restaurants needs a blog plan dedicated at selling their system to restaurant chains. They’re speaking a lot about the details of the restaurant industry as well as the software itself. This kind of topic would require some expertise – and it should go to an expert writer.
General vs. Expert (Bonus: vs. Authority) In Action
To represent exactly what we mean by our levels here at Express Writers, let’s look at some actual content quality ordered at the different levels by our clients.
This client opted in to our expert level at $90/500-600w. They also had a law firm, but wanted a statistical blog by our legal copywriting expert on the state of auto accidents and injury.
The difference in these two levels is a much more knowledgeable writer (legal expert) in the Expert writing category. We’ve seen many of our clients move from general to expert, even on bulk orders, these days (more on that below).
Client C: Authority Content
Pssst… I just launched this level last Thanksgiving – more about that here. Authority Content is a select level where a few of my best personally-trained and mentored writers create content that is very similar to Neil Patel, Jon Morrow, and other industry bloggers. I’ve studied how they blog, wrote a guide, and trained the best writers in our team on how to implement similar standards to the best bloggers on the web – and call this level Authority Content.
For the example, this client wanted to be positioned as an authority on Google for a newbie’s guide to building a website. He purchased our authority content level at $600 for 3000w. The resulting 3,300-word article included over 15 screenshots and images. Included in the cost were all the images, many of which were custom created in Adobe by our designer.
There you have it — the clear differences between our three levels of copy, which also gives you a good direction of which level you need for your brand, depending on your content goals.
Why You Should Consider At Least Expert Level for Your Brand
Nearly all brands that have a custom or crowded niche, or are in marketing, should be investing in expert writing if they’re looking to get content that stands out online. The concept of 10x content explains this. (I wrote an article on Search Engine Journal explaining 10x content: read it here.) That’s why we added seven new industries to the Content Shop this month, and that’s why our team of expert writers cover more than 25 custom industries.
To further delve into “why expert level,” let’s consider a couple massive reasons showing what great copy at an expert level can offer for your online presence.
1. Revenue Numbers Can Translate to 100x More Than What You Put In
I’ve invested time, resources, and revenue to my team members to help me create multiple content pieces for Express Writers.
Some have translated to high revenue returns in a short space of time.
One such piece was a SiteProNews guest blog, How to Create Likeable and Shareable Content. In just a few hours after it went live, we received a warm lead inquiry from a marketer asking for the kind of content that we create for our guest presence.
Inside the next few weeks, he talked to our sales team and converted for $5,000! I invested a little more than $50 into it: my return was 100x the cost of my investment.
Here’s what that cycle looks like, visually:
2. A Serious Reputation Boost
This case study post on our blog cost about $400 in creation, resources, time spent and teamwork. That’s not including the cost of the tool subscriptions that we used to research for the piece: BuzzSumo and SEMrush.
The result? Massive exposure and reputation boost for our brand. We reinforced how much we hold to quality and doing our best marketing through our own product of deliverable, quality content, and where it’s brought us today (4,000+ keyword rankings, $13,000/monthly worth in organic traffic).
Authority content isn’t for the faint of heart. It is, however, for those who want to “rule Google” and win the hearts of their readers. If that’s the content for you, go see it in the Content Shop here!
Summing up What Differentiates Our Writing Levels at Express Writers: General, Expert, Authority
There you have it.
An explanation of what we serve, at the three levels.
It’s simple, and most importantly, we guarantee quality at every level.
When it comes to fiction, publishers, writers, and editors are well aware of the deep structural importance of story structure, description, and flow. In the era of self-publishing and the misperception of nonfiction as ‘dry’ and uninspiring, content producers do not consider developmental editing as often as they should.
This is an antiquated way of thinking, especially when it comes to digital marketing.
Conveying your knowledge and enthusiasm with clarity is essential – and that’s why developmental editing is a crucial part of the content development process.
As copy edits are less expensive, content producers often skimp on the deeper editing services – but for important work representing your corporate and personal brands, it’s just as important to take a look at the structure of your work.
That’s where developmental editing comes into play. Read on for the difference between copy editing and developmental editing, and three reasons why developmental editing works incredibly well for long-form content.
What’s the Difference Between Copy Editing and Developmental Editing?
Copy Editing covers:
Grammar
Spelling
Sentence structure
Adherence to language structure or dialect (US English vs. UK English) and elimination of non-native language structure
Developmental Editing covers everything listed above in copy editing, plus:
Deep fact checking
Flow
Clarity
Structure
Partial rewriting
Substantive changes
Expert-level scrutiny of esoteric topic or industry
Remarks on the value of the content
Thorough checks for consistency
Ensuring the digital content is written around a focus keyword for optimal SEO
Match established brand voice and tone
Why Should You Consider Developmental Editing for Whitepapers, Ebooks, and Long Blog Posts?
If you’re an industry leader or looking to become one, you need top professional content in your category.
You want engaging and knowledgeable content more likely to rank higher in SERPs (search engine results pages) – or even better, Google knowledge graph placement, which positions you as the authority on any given topic.
For example, here’s my book, So You Think You Can Write?, ranking in the Knowledge graph: Your competition’s editorial process probably doesn’t include carefully structured content.
As you can probably guess, this can give you a further advantage when it comes to search engine placement and general helpfulness to prospective customers.
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According to Content Marketing Institute (CMI), Kraft found content marketing to be four times more valuable than targeted advertising. With that value, you should put your best content out there – and that means polished, engaging work.
Do You Need Developmental Editing?
During the content development and discovery process, we find that many prospective Express Writers’ customers aren’t sure about what type of services they need. Some have general ideas and need help getting them onto the page.
Others have a fully developed piece of long-form content and need a thorough edit.
Based on these common conversations, here’s a handy chart to help you get exactly what you need out of Express Writers:
Still not sure what you need? Book a time with our Client Specialist and we will point you in the right direction! We’ll discuss your content, ideas, and business goals to make sure you get the right services for your needs.
